Gordon Lightfoot (2014)

That one is so easy, it's the family. It's the extended family. They are the rainy day people.

You know, that's a tough question to answer. It really is. I wish I could give you an answer to that one! Topical songs, you know... are very difficult to come by. Every once in a while. And the Edmund Fitzgerald really seemed to go unnoticed at that time, anything I'd seen in the newspapers or magazines were very short, brief articles, and I felt I would like to expand upon the story of the sinking of the ship itself. And it was quite an undertaking to do that, I went and bought all of the old newspapers, got everything in chronological order, and went ahead and did it because i already had a melody in my mind and it was from an old Irish dirge that I heard when I was about 3 and a half years old. I think it was one of the first pieces of music that registered to me as being a piece of music. That's where the melody comes from, from an old Irish folk song.

That's an interesting one!

Well, I had this girlfriend one time, and I was at home working, at my desk, working at my songwriting which I had been doing all week since I was on a roll, and my girlfriend was somewhere drinking, drinking somewhere. So I was hoping that no one else would get their hands on her, because she was pretty good lookin'! And that's how I wrote the song "Sundown," and as a matter of fact, it was written just around Sundown, just as the sun was setting, behind the farm I had rented to use as a place to write the album.

Well, I mean, it's sort of self-explanatory, isn't it? I mean, it was that kind of a night - I didn't know what my girlfriend was doing while I was writing a song, and things were already a little bit shaky such as it was, and I could just sort of picture somebody, you know, maybe trying to pick up my girlfriend while she was out at the bar and I was at home working on all these songs, and the sun was going down and it was getting late! And that meant coming into your territory, that's what it means.

Deeply deeply moved and deeply honored, and quite surprised, actually. That's how it feels to me.

And no, no I do not. There is definitely material in my catalogue that will stand review very soon. Yes.

There's a lot of the information required to answer that.

Well, I usually start - sometimes I start with finding something that would make a good title. From a newspaper, or a billboard, or maybe on the subway, haha! And then get a melody and some chords, and try to turn the title into a song, make sure to repeat it with regularity.

And that's it- the chords, the words and the melody. If you want to start with a title, you can take a title and turn it into a song if you want to. I did that with my song "Carefree Highway" - I took it from a road sign. It came from seeing a road sign in Arizona.

Fred Penner! oh my! I highly doubt that. He outreaches me by about 4 inches I think. He's a pretty tall guy. He'd outreach me. I wouldn't have a chance against Fred.

This is always a tough one. And it seems like the hardest, it would be the easiest one of all. But it's Elvis. Elvis' version of "Early morning rain." That's one of my songs, and he did a wonderful job on it. Even sang it on the first TV show he did when he got out of the army. It was called "Aloha from Hawaii" that was the name of the TV show. You can google it up, it was the first time it got recorded, so I got a lot of attention on that song. I tried to meet him once, but Elvis had left the building. I never got to meet him, I never did, I almost got to meet him but I never got to meet the guy.

I like Bubbles. And I don't know why!

Well, I always thought about my folks. They're both gone now. But I always thought about my folks, it doesn't matter what kind of trouble i was getting into, I always thought about my folks.

Okay! Toronto - I love all of Canada. But I really love Toronto, because it's just a fast moving city, very very fast moving, terrible traffic jams all over the place, millions of people, everybody's walking around the street. Yonge street is the main street in Toronto, and it's part of a highway, if you go all the way out, Yonge Street, it goes for 600 miles, all the way to the border of Ontario & Manitoba - it's the longest highway in the world that becomes a street when it gets to Toronto, which is the biggest city in Canada. So I was watching people with their children one day, I was in my car, and I saw these people looking after their kids and they were trying to cross the road and I was afraid I was going to plow into them at one point, and all of a sudden I got the idea to write that song, "On Yonge Street," In my car. I have ideas for songs when I am driving around in my car, you know? Ideas for songs when I am having a shower. It's funny, the way it goes. I always had to produce, you know? I always had a band, and a family, and I had to come up with the material, so I had to keep thinking about it.

I had a responsibility. So I kept writing. That's what kept me writing. I wanted to be right where i am right now - I'm 75 years of age, and I'm excited about getting back on the road right now! I've been on the road my entire life, but I've been off the road 8 weeks, I just got 8 weeks off, so I'm really excited about getting back. We got off in the middle of June and almost took the summer off - we did some amphitheater dates in the month of July, yea, down in the Northeast, The Wolf Trap and places like that.

Okay, okay! I love the work that we do! We'll come back to Australia sometime.

The first time I went to Australia, it took me about 27 hours to get there, that's the way it was back in those days, the 1970's. Okay, carry on.

Oh, by golly, let me think about that for a minute! in a state of mind I was in at the time, I think "Sundown" was probably the most fun to write. While my girlfriend was out at the bars, I was getting worried bout her, I had been writing songs all day, and I figured she should have been home helping me write songs! But it worked out okay, though.

Ah. I was living in a very small apartment, with a new wife and 2 small children, sleeping in the next bedroom when I wrote that song.

Red Shae! Red, he was a wonderful man. Great sense of humor. Wonderful father, great friend, wonderful to his children. Made an album with his son Scott, good album too, I just listened to it a couple days ago. He's long gone, God rest his soul, and he played guitar for me for 7 years, and these were the funniest years of my life, because he had a great sense of humor. And a great friend also, I might add.

I'd have to think about that one, but I'll tell ya, Bryan Adams right now. He's a fellow Canadian. He's a great singer, great guitar player, and i love his songwriting. He would be among my favorite artists.

Ah! Vietnam.

I remember the Paul Butterfield Blues Band really well. They played Town Hall and I was their opening act, it was 1966 or 1965 or thereabouts. Paul Butterfield Blues Band and myself on the same bill, I was the opening act, at Town Hall. Well, I was thrilled to watch Mike Bloomfield playing guitar! I was thrilled with the whole thing. Before that I had played at the Bitter End, I'd only gotten that far, which was a very well known folk club in Greenwich Village. So it was sort of a step up the line for me, to be able to play in Town Hall, it meant i had found a management deal in New York by that point.

I'm afraid that I will not be around to find that out!

In answer to the question; yes, I do it through physical exercise. And no, what photo is that? Which photo?

Yes, I gotta reach. I gotta reach deep for this one, i'll tell ya.

What it is is a marriage between the lyric and the melody. It's as close as I can get for you.

I like to play "If You Can Read my Mind." And Bob Dylan.

Well, I had a melody, and I had some chords. All I had was the melody and the chords and no story. When the story came on television, that the Edmund had foundered in Lake Superior 3 hours earlier, it was right on the CBC here in Canada, I came into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and saw the news and I said "That's my story to go with the melody and the chords."

Last year, I was back to full strength after the illness that i had a few years back, and I had the best band I've ever had, right now. So last year was my best year so far, because i have had this band for 2 and a half years right now, and last year was my best year! Because we were doing what we do really well, we think.

First thing I did was call all my kids! And that's it. Next question.

Ahhhh. Hard Rain's Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan.

Well, I look upon the Canadians and the Americans as cousins. So basically we kind of think the same way, the same wavelength. I love my cousins. I have 10 first cousins. And I love every one of them. So I don't think about the border when I am writing my songs, I think about North America. I've been all over the arctic areas too. The best trip I ever went on was to Kazan, from Snowbird Lake up to Baker's Lake, you might know where that is!

Ahhhh. I know!

I like to go up to Beaverton, Ontario. It's a place where one of my old musical muses still lives to these days. We played music together in high school and every once in a while I check in and visit them. Her name is Marg Barnsdale. She actually at one point was responsible for getting my career started very early on, because she introduced me very early on to some people in Toronto who could help me. So I still go up there. It's Beaverton. On Lake Simcoe.

I was in Kirkland Lake about 1978? I was coming off a canoe trip on the Rupert River in Northern Quebec, I was out on a lot of canoe trips, you know? And I went through Kirkland Lake on my way down the Polar Bear special, coming off one of those canoe trips. That was the only time I was ever there.

It's there for them. Because we have a Canadian content law which went into effect around 1973. So all Canadian musicians are getting a fair shake here, those that are creating the kind of product that can be played on the airwaves. And a lot of them are getting accepted by the industry in the United States and elsewhere. So they are certainly not being overlooked at all, I think everybody's got a good shot here. Just write the songs, get the demos made, get a little team together, just the way the rest of us did. Just keep writing those songs!

No, I feel safer here because of what i see going on in other parts of the world. Sure we have our problems here, there's always something going on, but we are in better shape than in a lot of other parts of the world and should be grateful for it. I have no need or desire much to travel abroad either. I know that Steve Earl, he still goes to Europe and does a solo tour - I don't know, I'd rather stay here and keep my energy alive right here at home rather than spread it out all over the planet. We've been asked to go to Japan, to Russia, China, Philippines, all those places, and i'm just not interested in going there, I'd like to stay close to home so I can keep an eye on things.

I liked the Queen Elizabeth theater in Vancouver. I like Royal Albert Hall in England, if we ever go back there again. And I like Carnegie Hall. I like - this answer is - Greek theater. Favorite venue? That's always one that - we've played in so many places, we've played in every state, we've played in just about every city and town in North America, it's hard for me to choose a real good one. The Universal Ampitheater was a good one we used to play in Los Angeles. That's one. And on the East Coast, it would be, we do like, Carnegie, Lincoln Center, we still do Town Hall when we go in there. Lately we have been doing the B.B. King theater when we go to New York. Here in Toronto it's Massey Hall, where I live. So we do a big show here every couple a years, and we have that coming up now at the end of November.

Well, I know that they had one where they used "Sundown" in the background on some TV show when they were killing somebody, playing it in the background! I can't think of the name of the series, one of those TV movies. I think the one I did for the first Michael Douglas movie, that would be the best one, probably Don Quixote. It was in the first Michael Douglas movie that he was ever in, it was called "Hail Hero." It was about a kid getting ready to go to Vietnam. I had some of that stuff in my program back then, when it was all going on.

I think "Darkness at the Break of Noon" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Or "All Along the Watchtower." Now that's a great recording of a Bob Dylan song by Jimi Hendrix.

I've had to reinvent myself 2 or 3 times already. We even went all-electric onstage at one point, in the 80's. I did an album that was rock-oriented, so we got the electric guitars onstage. The problem was I could never tune the darn things. Those electric guitars, they were too skittish.

I definitely find it rewarding. But what I mean by that, I find it rewarding because it allows us to continue going on doing what we do.

You know, I wouldn't even know where to begin to answer that question, because there must be about 2-3 dozen of them! Perhaps I should mention... okay, one who was really good that nobody ever heard anything about was Bob Gibson. Yup, he was a great artist. That's who I learned to play 12 string guitar from, was from him. He was one of my favorite ones. There was also Phil Oakes, and Bob Dylan, and Arlo Guthrie, Paul Simon, all these people who came out of the era. Boy , there were some of them who were really good - Steve Goodman is another one. My goodness, I remember when he opened for Steve Martin, on an arena tour, the comedian and banjo player, the SNL guy? And Steve opened as a soloist, all by himself, as the opening act for Steve Martin in arenas all across North America. And he wrote all kinds of amazing songs, Stevie I called him. Both those guys, him and Bob Gibson, were from Chicago.

I gotta tell you, I spend most of my time listening to talk radio...

I think if they are talking about my instruments, are you talking about the 2 guitars, I guess, it would be hard for me to comment because both guitars have excellent quality, they both just have a different sound, different tone, they sound completely different. My musical repertoire has diminished somewhat over the past few years. The tone is different. Each guitar is different, but the tone they deliver is totally different, one from the other.